Sourdough Newbies

New to Sourdough or Breadmaking in general?

Firstly... Welcome!

Making sourdough bread can be intimidating, but if you have instructions to follow from start to finish... it actually becomes very easy!

After giving lots of ad-hoc advice to sourdough-curious people, I decided to finally make a series that takes you from the starting point of simply a bag of flour, through the creation of a starter and then on to baking some delicious sourdough bread.

If you want to take the plunge, go ahead and click here to subscribe to my YouTube channel, then follow the playlist below at your own pace.

If you have any questions along the way, feel free to reach out.  The quickest way is probably to connect with me on Instagram @loafhacker and then just DM me.

San Francisco Sourdough Bread Series:

From Starter to Loaf in 14 Days

2020-03-2212:10
San Francisco Sourdough Bread Series: From Starter to Loaf in 14 Days
Sourdough LoafHacker (Brendan!)
San Francisco Sourdough Bread Series: From Starter to Loaf in 14 Days Since we're all social distancing in our homes for the foreseeable future, what better time is there for you to learn the art of sourdough breadmaking!? Join me in a series of videos that I'll be creating over the next two weeks that will show you first how to create a sourdough starter from scratch, then how to use that starter to create a tangy San Francisco style sourdough loaf. What are you waiting for? Subscribe and start your adventure today!
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2020-03-2319:48
San Francisco Sourdough Bread Series: Day 1 - What you'll need
Sourdough LoafHacker (Brendan!)
San Francisco Sourdough Bread Series: Day 1 - What you'll need Ok so we're starting this adventure together today! At the end of 14 days you should have a new Sourdough Starter and a couple San Francisco style Sourdough Loaves, and I will have hopefully successfully completed 14 days of videos with my sanity intact! 🤞🏻🤣
Thanks so much for stopping by and hopefully taking part, and please share this video with anyone you think might want to start their very own Sourdough Adventure!
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2020-03-2408:00
San Francisco Sourdough Bread Series: Day 2 - Starting your Starter
Sourdough LoafHacker (Brendan!)
San Francisco Sourdough Bread Series: Day 2 - Starting your Starter In this video, flour meets water - and your sourdough starter takes flight!
Ideally use stone ground whole-meal/whole-wheat flour (75g) and strong white bread flour (or white all purpose flour ) - (25g) to kickstart your starter. And don't forget to use filtered or bottled water for this initial week. Finally - please try to keep your starter above 25C (77F) for the whole week. Your oven with the light on might work great for this, but perhaps on the top of the fridge or near a radiator might be better? Wherever you can get 27-30C (80-86F) is w Read More
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2020-03-2508:00
San Francisco Sourdough Bread Series: Day 3 - Feeding your Starter
Sourdough LoafHacker (Brendan!)
San Francisco Sourdough Bread Series: Day 3 - Feeding your Starter Sourdough starters aren't like industrial baker's yeast - and that's a good thing! You never know what you're going to get when you start a starter and that makes it unique to you and very special indeed. After just the first day your starter will start to take on a unique identity of its own - and that's a beautiful thing! Check out the range you might experience and how to feed the yeastie beasties to keep them happy and start to stabilise them into a stable sourdough starter.
Long live mighty mouse!
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2020-03-2520:51
San Francisco Sourdough Bread Series: Day 3b - Did I just kill my starter!?
Sourdough LoafHacker (Brendan!)
San Francisco Sourdough Bread Series: Day 3b - Did I just kill my starter!? If you leave your new starter too long without food, your sourdough adventure could be over before it really begins. My new starter got a little overactive and I found it in a dire state... but at least it's a teachable moment to hopefully help you avoid the same mistake!
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2020-03-2608:34
San Francisco Sourdough Bread Series: Day 4 - You've got options!
Sourdough LoafHacker (Brendan!)
San Francisco Sourdough Bread Series: Day 4 - You've got options! Since everyone's sourdough starter will develop at different rates, you now have 2 options depending on where your's is at right now. Learn when to move to the next option, and how to know when you're ready to jump to the next video with your starter!
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2020-03-2712:53
San Francisco Sourdough Bread Series: Day 5 - FAQ
Sourdough LoafHacker (Brendan!)
San Francisco Sourdough Bread Series: Day 5 - FAQ Find out what other bakers that are taking this journey with you have been asking.
Is my starter too thick?
Is sourdough starter supposed to smell bad?
What is hooch?
These and more, plus what should you be doing with your starter today??
Please do keep the questions coming too - either in the comments below or on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/loafhacker/
p.s. Sorry for the late upload today!
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2020-03-2820:31
San Francisco Sourdough Bread Series: Day 6 - Transitioning your starter
Sourdough LoafHacker (Brendan!)
San Francisco Sourdough Bread Series: Day 6 - Transitioning your starter We've created our initial sourdough starter with wholemeal flour. Now it's time to start transitioning that to a white-bread-flour-only sourdough starter, which will be easier for us to use when making San Francisco sourdough bread.
We now only have one more step left before our sourdough starter is ready to bake - so get excited!
As mentioned in the video, go check out Maurizio's amazing site, "The Perfect Loaf", at https://www.theperfectloaf.com/
The sourdough discard recipes I mentioned are at: https://www.theperfectloaf.com/my-top-3-lefto Read More
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2020-03-2915:02
San Francisco Sourdough Bread Series: Day 7 - Starter Complete
Sourdough LoafHacker (Brendan!)
San Francisco Sourdough Bread Series: Day 7 - Starter Complete This is the final step of preparing our brand new sourdough starter so you can use it next week to bake your very own San Francisco sourdough bread at home.
Make sure and check out examples that I have made on my Instagram feed: https://instagram.com/loafhacker/
And please share your progress with me on Instagram or Twitter. I'd love to see your brand new starter and make sure to tell me what you've named it as well!
See you tomorrow for the next step in the course - finding out what you'll need to have ready to bake your first loaf in just a few Read More
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2020-03-3014:24
San Francisco Sourdough Bread Series: Day 8 - The Levain and Autolyse Phases
Sourdough LoafHacker (Brendan!)
San Francisco Sourdough Bread Series: Day 8 - The Levain and Autolyse Phases San Francisco Sourdough Bread Series: Day 8 - The Levain and Autolyse Phases
Sourdough Starter, Levain, Autolyse? Are these terms all a bit confusing to you? Well let's fix that and explain what each one is, and when you should use them.
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2020-04-0113:50
San Francisco Sourdough Bread Series: Day 9 - What do you need to bake sourdough...
Sourdough LoafHacker (Brendan!)
San Francisco Sourdough Bread Series: Day 9 - What do you need to bake sourdough... In this video, we'll continue our journey from Starter to Loaves by looking at what you absolutely need to have to bake sourdough bread, and then we look at some nice-to-haves and bonus items as well :)
If you're watching this series live as I put them out, my apologies for missing a day. It just took so long to film this one with all the different clips that I needed an extra day for it... sorry!
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I got eh tip for the DIY plaster knife (and a lot more!) from this great video years ago from the SF Baking Institute. It's a must-watch if you Read More
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2020-04-0219:04
San Francisco Sourdough Bread Series: Day 10 - What makes San Francisco Sourdough Bread special?
Sourdough LoafHacker (Brendan!)
San Francisco Sourdough Bread Series: Day 10 - What makes San Francisco Sourdough Bread special? In this video, we'll continue our journey from Starter to Loaves by looking at what "San Francisco Sourdough" bread really is and how you can replicate it at home.
Here's the schedule for the remaining videos in the series:
Day 11: Beginner-friendly no-knead SF Sourdough
Day 12: Advanced recipe: Gluten development
Day 13: Advanced recipe: Scoring and baking
Day 14: Wrap-up, Q&A from previous days
See you back tomorrow!
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2020-04-0420:12
San Francisco Sourdough Bread Series: Day 11 - Best SF Sourdough bread recipe for beginners
Sourdough LoafHacker (Brendan!)
San Francisco Sourdough Bread Series: Day 11 - Best SF Sourdough bread recipe for beginners In this video, we'll continue our journey from Starter to Loaves by going through a no-knead style recipe for making your first loaf of San Francisco Sourdough bread at home.
It might be easy, but it's not a compromise... we're using real sourdough starter (no baker's yeast shortcuts here!) and showing you how you can use long fermentation and stretch-and-fold techniques to produce this iconic type of bread without any advanced bread knowledge.
Download the recipe here: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/m5sas4ewyut3nvy/LoafHacker_No-Knead_SF_So Read More
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2020-04-1318:06
San Francisco Sourdough Bread Series: Day 12 - Advanced artisan recipe: Gluten development & shaping
Sourdough LoafHacker (Brendan!)
San Francisco Sourdough Bread Series: Day 12 - Advanced artisan recipe: Gluten development & shaping In this video, we'll continue our journey from Starter to Loaves by starting the advanced recipe for making artisan level San Francisco Sourdough bread at home.
We're building on the techniques taught in the previous recipe and adding in a few advanced ones like slap-and-folds, lamination and stitch-and-rolls. There are more steps in this advanced recipe, but we'll go over each one so you can quickly master them in your own kitchen.
Download the recipe here: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/0ukaqrzlq8rdfh6/LoafHacker_Advanced_SF_Sourdough_bre Read More
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2020-04-1518:00
San Francisco Sourdough Bread Series:Day 13 - Advanced artisan recipe: Scoring & blistered crust
Sourdough LoafHacker (Brendan!)
San Francisco Sourdough Bread Series:Day 13 - Advanced artisan recipe: Scoring & blistered crust In this video, we'll continue our journey from Starter to Loaves by finishing the advanced recipe for making artisan level San Francisco Sourdough bread at home.
Yesterday we went over a few advanced techniques for dough development and shaping like slap-and-folds, lamination and stitch-and-rolls. Today we're focusing on different techniques for scoring your loaves before they go in the oven, and how to cook them for the best blistery crust.
Download the full recipe here: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/0ukaqrzlq8rdfh6/LoafHacker_Advanced Read More
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2020-04-2008:12
San Francisco Sourdough Bread Series: Day 14 - Final FAQ Finale
Sourdough LoafHacker (Brendan!)
San Francisco Sourdough Bread Series: Day 14 - Final FAQ Finale So we're finally coming to the end of our "Starter to Loaves" journey...
All that's left to do today is to go over some of the top questions I've received from people following along at home:
#4 How do I load/unload a Dutch Oven without getting burned
#3 Can I use different flours?
#2 Can I mix things into my bread, and how do I do it?
#1 How can I put my starter on hold?
I hope you've enjoyed this video and this series!
Come visit me on Instagram if you still want more San Francisco Sourdough bread goodness over the next few weeks: https:// Read More
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2020-05-2514:51
Scoring Sourdough: Scoring the Golden Gate Bridge
Sourdough LoafHacker (Brendan!)
Scoring Sourdough: Scoring the Golden Gate Bridge Here's a fun design to cap off the SF Sourdough Series and as a celebration of my first 1k subscribers - thank you all for subscribing!
Scoring the Golden Gate Bridge onto a Sourdough Batard.
Bread specs: 87% hydration, 15% levain, 95% white flour (5% spelt just for fun) and a VERY long proof to get the yummy San Francisco sourdough tang! This bad boy had a 3 hour warm proof at 31c/88f, then 24 hours at 9c/48f, then a further 36 hours at 3c/37f. In total... 63 hours of proofing and retarding which equated to some *serious* SF tang! Yum yum!
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